


what time taught us

by orphan_account



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: M/M, thiiiiissss doesnt make sense idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-04
Updated: 2013-09-04
Packaged: 2017-12-25 14:45:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,279
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/954363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>the lifetimes where they meet and never meet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what time taught us

**Author's Note:**

> idea inspired by the wonderful comic written by lalage on tumblr. this doesn't really make sense and idk. it could be better. but. whatever.

 

_(...) yet always, you forgive me._   
_as if you understand what's going on,_   
_and you're making up for all the lifetimes in which one of us doesn't exist,_   
_and the ones where we just, barely, never meet._   
_i hate those. i prefer the ones in which you kill me._   
_but when all's said and done, i'd rather surrender to you in other ways. (...)_   
_it's only fair that i should be the one to chase you across ten, twenty-five, a hundred lifetimes_   
_until i find the one where you'll return to me._

...

**first life**

"Don't."

"Don't what?"

...

**second life**

Ian's voice is soft, his lungs full of broken glass. "Please."

Mickey's looking at him like he's looking right through him.

"I'm not a fucking faggot," he says, and Ian can hear the way his tone trembles, see the way his jaw clenches.

"Don't," Ian says.

Mickey doesn't even look back. 

...

**third life**

Frank looks dead in his coffin. He looks deader than any dead thing Ian's ever seen.

Outside of the church, Ian smokes six cigarettes in rapid succession when a boy passes along the path, pausing for a second in front of Ian.

"Can I bum a smoke?" he asks.

Ian shakes his last cigarette out and wordlessly passes it to him. His hands are shaking.

"Who are you?" asks the boy.

"Ian."

Sparing a glance up, Ian sees the boy staring at him with a funny look on his face, but doesn't ask.

"Mickey," says the boy around the cigarette at the corner of his lips. Ian looks away, and he sits down next to him.

The city is very quiet.

...

**fourth life**

"I love you," Mickey says.

Ian doesn't even breathe. "No, you don't." A small family passes by them with a wailing baby, the intercom echoing over the speakers.

Mickey's lips are trembling. "Believe me."

Ian's going to miss his flight. He doesn't know what to say. He doesn't know how to believe him.

"I have to go," he says. Mickey keeps looking at him as if he's already gone. Ian kisses him once, quickly, before he turns around and walks away.

He looks back once but Mickey is already gone.

...

**fifth life**

Mandy greets him at the bus stop with two suitcases and a grin. Ian doesn't protest when she hugs him too hard, laughing when she stumbles on their way to his car.

"How's New York?"

Mandy shrugs coyly, as if it's not utterly perfect up there, as usual. "I wish I was there instead of here. I hate funerals."

Ian shakes his head. "Yeah, I'm sorry about that."

Mandy slams the trunk closed, squinting against the sunlight at Ian. "It was only a matter of time before he got himself killed. Honestly."

Ian nods. He didn't know Mandy's brother well, but he was the subject of exasperation for most of his former employers.

Mandy rests her elbows on the hood of Ian's beat-up Mustang. "Mickey Milkovich," she sighs, rolling her eyes fondly, "the ticking time bomb."

...

**sixth life**

Mickey shoves Ian to the side on the small bed, tossing him a flattened peanut butter sandwich from the lunch hall. Ian unwraps it gratefully. "What else did they have?"

"Egg salad." Ian makes a face and Mickey grins. "Yeah, so fucking eat that and be happy, bitch."

"Thanks." Already starving, he starts to wolf down the sandwich, barely able to complain about the mediocre peanut butter.

Mickey steals a glance at him and half-smiles. "So, Firecrotch," he starts, nudging Ian's knee with his own, "when do you get out of here?"

"A month," Ian says around a mouthful of chunky peanut butter.

"Four months for stealing a car?"

Ian smiles a little. "My sister has connections."

Mickey shakes his head. "Fucking shit, Gallagher. What am I gonna do without your ass in this shithole?"

Ian glances at him, crumpling his sandwich wrapper in both hands. "Jerk it?" he suggests, grinning.

"Fuck off."

...

**seventh life**

On Ian's way home from the drugstore, he gets held up next to the park just three blocks away from his house by a kid at gunpoint. The boy couldn't have been older than Ian himself. Ian notices his hands are shaking and wonders if the gun is even loaded.

"Give me all your money and I won't shoot." The gun clicks and Ian winces on instinct.

"I don't -- I don't have anything. I promise."

"Show me." The gun jerks in unsteady hands and Ian is almost certain it's loaded now.

Ian reaches for his wallet. He only has $12 to his name, enough to pitch in for food for the rest of the week. If that was taken -- he'd be better off dead.

Before he can open his wallet to see, he decides to make a break for it, calling the kid's bluff on whether or not he'd actually shoot.

Ian runs and makes it a few yards before the gun fires and misses, fires and misses, until a lucky shot hits him square in the back of his neck.

Stupid. Calling someone's bluff. Ian liked to pretend he was smarter than he looked.

The outline of the boy's face against the city lights make him look older than he was. There'ss a panicky look in his eyes but he doesn't say anything, just takes Ian's wallet and runs, his footsteps fading into the sounds of the city at night.

Ian is left to die.

...

**eighth life**

Ian meets Mickey Milkovich for the first time at a shady dive bar in southside Chicago and ends up fucking him against his fridge, in full view of a pretty picture of Mickey and his beautiful wife and his two-year-old son.

"Beautiful family," Ian says and Mickey grunts at him but doesn't say anything else.

In the other room, Mickey's son starts to wake up, and Ian watches amusedly as Mickey downs the rest of his beer and pulls his boxers to his waist. "'Scuse me."

The sound of Mickey trying to calm down his kid sends something warm burrowing to the bottom of Ian's stomach.

"Where's his mom?" he asks when Mickey shuts the door behind him.

"Working," he says, and shoves his hand down Ian's boxers again, fumbling for his cock. "I don't want to talk about it."

Ian doesn't try to ask again.

...

**ninth life**

Lip is with Ian when Ian is about to get deployed for the first time.

"You got everything?"

Ian nods. "I even packed underwear. Thanks, mom."

Lip waves him off. "Whatever. Can't have you running out of clean underwear in the middle of getting shot at in the desert."

A commotion outside the airport breaks the conversation. A guy about Ian's age with black hair and homemade tattoos is getting the shit beaten out of him by guys at least twice his age. Police officers are already breaking it up when Ian gets close enough to see.

"What the fuck is that about?"

Lip shrugs. "It's Chicago," he offers, as an explanation.

Ian can't stop looking at the boy, his face bloodied and bruised while he heaves for breath on the pavement. "I know him from somewhere," Ian says.

"One of your fuckbuds?" Lip suggests.

Ian rolls his eyes. "No. I don't know where from."

"Well, shut up about him, then. I gotta get back. Fiona's gonna need me to cheer her up about you leaving." On cue, Lip's phone goes off with a text message, no doubt from Fiona.

Ian promises to write and starts towards the terminal. As he's boarding, he can't stop thinking about the boy. Like he knows him from somewhere but can't picture where.

Maybe it's all in his head.


End file.
